Death by Gaslight

by Michael Kurland

  “Well—carried them off with him, I suppose.”

  “Come now, Lestrade. You think our murderer has developed an acquisitive instinct for his seventh killing? What about all the fine jackets and waistcoats and cravats and assorted men’s furnishings at each of the previous victim’s abodes?”

  “It’s just possible the fellow needed a pair of shoes,” Lestrade insisted. “Perhaps he suddenly developed a hole in one of his own, or the uppers separated from the lowers. And he didn’t leave his own behind because he was afraid of our finding some identifying mark on them.”

  “So he took them off with him to discard unobtrusively?”

  “Right, Mr. Holmes. Like that.”

  “I don’t think so, Lestrade. I think he took the victim’s shoes because he wanted the victim’s shoes; but not to wear. I think he wanted the shoes themselves, or something concealed in them. But with any luck we may soon find out whether you’re right or I’m right. Lestrade, have your men scour the area for ten blocks in every direction. Have them carefully examine gutter drains and dustbins, and any other place of concealment. Instruct them to bring back any article of clothing they find, most especially shoes or parts of shoes.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Whatever shoes they turn out to be, I agree that it will be useful to find them. I’ll send to the division station for some large bull’s-eye lanterns and put some men right on it.”

  “Very good. Where is that medical examiner? We’ve been here half an hour already.”

  “Dr. Pilschard doesn’t like coming out after midnight, Mr. Holmes. We’ll have some of our men bring the body in to St. Luke’s in a death wagon, and he’ll examine it in the morning.”

  “Is that his standard practice? Well, send somebody after Dr. Pilschard and inform him that I want the body examined in situ, and I want it examined soon. The man gets a two-guinea fee for every body he cuts up; let him do something to earn it!”

  Lestrade shook his head. He didn’t see what difference a few hours would make, but the commissioners, in their infinite wisdom, had seen fit to put Sherlock Holmes in charge of this investigation, and orders is orders. He left the room and whistled up a pair of his plainclothesmen, and sent them on their way. When he returned to the room, Holmes had reached the victim’s head in his crawl across the carpet, and was concentrating his attention on it. It was not an attractive sight, jaws gaping open, eyes staring, lying in a pool of half-clotted blood.

  “Help me move the couch, Lestrade,” Holmes said, carefully placing the corpse’s feet on the floor. “I didn’t want to touch the body until the medical examiner had seen it, but time passes and the killer gets farther away. I’ll disturb it as little as possible. Let’s just take the couch over to the left, along the wall. That’s the way. Careful where you step!”

  They put the couch down, and Holmes examined the great pool of blood that was now revealed. “As I thought,” he said, kneeling and peering through his glass. “The poor man was certainly killed right at this spot. The paucity of blood under and around the head had me worried, considering the depth of the wound. But a slight slope of the floor explains that. It all ran under the couch.”

  “It certainly did,” Lestrade agreed.

  There was a disturbance at the front door, and one of the constables stationed outside came in and stopped smartly in front of Inspector Lestrade. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but there’s a gentleman outside, just pulled up in a carriage, who demands access.”

  “Ah!” Lestrade said. “Friend of the victim?”

  “No, sir,” the constable said. “Says he’s a friend of the commissioner, sir.”

  “Is that right?” Lestrade said. “How curious, at one in the morning. Fellow must have a powerful interest. What’s his name?”

  “He says he’s the Count d’Hiver, sir.”

  Sherlock Holmes looked up from the corpse. “D’Hiver?” he asked. “Show his lordship in, Constable!”

  “And just who is ‘his lordship’?” Lestrade demanded, as the constable retreated to the front door.

  “As it was described to me,” Holmes said, “he has a watching brief from the Privy Seal. I’m not sure what that actually signifies, but I assume it covers visiting the scene of the crime.”

  “He may have a ‘watching brief,’” Lestrade said, “but how did he know there was anything to watch? How did he find out about the crime so quickly, and at such an unlikely hour?”

  “We shall ask him,” Holmes said, getting to his feet. “I myself am curious as to how—and why.”

  The Count d’Hiver burst through the door with that excess of energy that seems to possess many people who are of less than normal stature. “What’s happening here?” he demanded of the empty hall. “Who’s in charge? I want to see—Oh, there you are, Holmes. My God! He certainly is dead, whoever he is. Who would have known the human body had so much blood in it?”

  “I assume the question is rhetorical, my lord,” Holmes said. “Let me introduce Inspector Lestrade, who is in charge of the investigation for Scotland Yard.”

  “Lestrade,” d’Hiver said, nodding slightly. “I have heard the name. You are well thought of.”

  “Thank you—”

  “Which, frankly, I consider astounding: seven corpses and no arrests, barring the idiotic detention of a brace of servants.”

  “We do our best, my lord, We can’t all be Sherlock Holmes,” Lestrade said, his face suffusing with the red tint of suppressed anger.

  “It seemingly wouldn’t be of any great help if you were,” d’Hiver commented coldly, fixing his gaze on Holmes. “Well, have you made any progress, Mr. Holmes? Have you found any clues?”

  “I have been here only for some thirty minutes, my lord,” Holmes said calmly. “The hunt for information—for clues, if you will—is painstaking and time-consuming. Perhaps, if you wish to converse, we had best go out into the entrance hall. It is better to disturb the area immediately around the body as little as possible, for fear of destroying possible evidence.”

  “Destroying evidence?” D’Hiver sniffed. “How can my mere presence in the room destroy any evidence?”

  “A hair can be evidence, my lord,” Holmes said, rising and stalking into the entrance hall himself, so that d’Hiver was forced to follow. “Or a bit of fluff, or a speck of dirt lying on the carpet. Just by walking over such a minuscule object, you may remove it; or you might inadvertently leave behind a hair or a few grains of dust yourself, thus confusing the real evidence.”

  D’Hiver stared at Holmes, trying to decide whether the famous consulting detective was serious. “Preposterous,” he said uncertainly.

  “Not at all, my lord,” Holmes assured him. “The smallest trifle can be of the utmost importance, to one trained to observe and practiced in making logical deductions from what he observes. I once cleared up an obscure murder by winding a watch; and another time I discerned a dreadful secret because I noticed the depth to which the parsley had sunk into the butter on a hot day. Then again, I once cleared a man named Estermann of the charge of murdering his wife because of noting something as fragile as a cobweb.”

  D’Hiver pursed his lips thoughtfully, continuing to glare up at the hawk-nosed consulting detective. “If you can make so much of so little,” he said, “why don’t you have more on this case? Seven murders so far, Mr. Holmes.”

  “I am aware of the body count, my lord,” Holmes said. “This is only the second opportunity that I have had to arrive in time to try to rescue some of this small detail before it is ground into the dust by hordes of police inspectors, Home Office officials, reporters, curiosity seekers, and cleaning women. I have hopes of developing something from what we find here.” Noting Lestrade’s frantic signaling from behind Count d’Hiver’s head, Holmes continued, “May I ask how it happens that you are here, my lord?”

  “Come now, Holmes, you know of my position and my interest.”

  “Indeed, my lord,” Holmes said. “It is your information that I question
. How did you know to come here?”

  “Ah!” d’Hiver said. “Now I comprehend. You wonder how I popped up so mysteriously at the opportune moment at the—what do you call it?—scene of the crime. Is that it?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “It is not so strange. The commissioner notified the Earl of Arundale when word came in, and Arundale notified me. And here I am. I confess I rather fancied the chance to view the actual site of one of these senseless killings so soon after it happened; but I was not prepared for the appearance of that corpse. It makes death look very unappealing. One would just as soon not see such a thing soon after a meal.”

  The soft footsteps of Gammidge, the valet, coming down the stairs, interrupted the conversation. He looked startled as three pairs of eyes turned to watch him descend. “I could find nothing amiss, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “As far as I can tell, no one has been in the master’s bedroom since he left it this evening.”

  “And the hat and shoes?” Holmes asked.

  “Not in evidence, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Come now,” Count d’Hiver said, “this sounds interesting. Hat and shoes?”

  “Missing, my lord,” Lestrade said. “I have sent some men out looking for them.”

  “The victim’s?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Holmes said. “Evening dress: a black silk hat and black patent-leather shoes.”

  “Taken by the killer? How very fascinating. Whatever for?”

  “Mr. Holmes knows,” Lestrade said, “but he’s not saying.”

  “I have a theory, that’s all,” Holmes said. “The recovery of the shoes will tell whether I am right.”

  “And if they’re not recovered,” Lestrade said, “it will show that I’m right: they were taken to replace the killer’s own shoes.”

  “It does seem an odd thing to do,” Count d’Hiver said, “taking the victim’s shoes and top hat.”

  The door of the library, down the hall from where they were standing, opened, and a team of two plainclothesmen emerged. “We have checked all around the ground floor, Inspector,” the taller of the two told Lestrade. “As far as we can tell, there is no way that the murderer could have entered or left the premises. All windows are securely fastened; the rear egress is double-bolted from the inside; the stairs to the cellar, which emerge in the butler’s pantry, have a door which is closed and bolted at the upper end. It is a flimsy bolt, but nonetheless it has not been violated.”

  Lestrade nodded. “What we expected,” he said. “Just on the off chance, MacDonald, check around upstairs, also.”

  “Yes sir!” MacDonald said, making a perfunctory gesture that somewhat resembled a salute, and the two plainclothesmen turned and headed up the broad stairway.

  “If you don’t mind, my lord, I would like to go back to my examination of the victim and the murder room,” Holmes said.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Holmes,” Count d’Hiver replied, “I’d like to watch.” He held up a hand to cut off Holmes’s retort. “I’ll stand in the doorway,” he promised, “and I will not disturb you, except, perhaps, with a very occasional question. I know you think me overly critical, but it may be because I do not grasp the complexities of your task. I begin to see that this is so from the conversation we have just had. Perhaps if I am permitted to observe, it will instill in me a proper appreciation for the difficulties of your profession.”

  “Perhaps, my lord,” Holmes said dryly. “At any rate, if you wish to observe, silently, from the doorway, you are welcome to do so.”

  One of the constables guarding the portals came into the hall. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said to Lestrade, “but there’s a reporter outside who wants to speak with someone in charge.”

  “A reporter?” Lestrade swiveled around.

  “Morning Chronicle, sir.”

  “Tell the Morning Chronicle to return in the morning,” Holmes said. “We can’t be bothered with that now. Tell him we’ll have a complete report of the crime available to the press in the morning. Say seven-thirty.”

  “Beg pardon, Mr. Holmes, but it’s a young lady.”

  Holmes looked irritated. “What’s a young lady?”

  “The reporter, sir.”

  “A young lady?” Lestrade was clearly scandalized. “The reporter for the Morning Chronicle?”

  “Yes, sir. There is a gentleman with her, a sketch artist. They would like to see the, ah, room, Inspector. Where the victim is, you know. And she says that she is put to bed at three, so she would really like the information now.”

  “She is put to bed at three?” Count d’Hiver asked, looking vaguely amused. “By whom?”

  “No, no,” a musically feminine voice said from the front door, and the reporter for the Morning Chronicle, Miss Cecily Perrine, entered the hall. Behind her trailed a small man with a brown bowler hat, a wide walrus mustache, and a sketchpad. “It is the newspaper that is put to bed at three,” Cecily Perrine explained, unfastening her wide brown sealskin cape and folding it over her arm. “Which is why I would like some details of the crime now, so that my readers will have the opportunity of learning all about it over their morning kippers.”

  “Miss Cecily Perrine, isn’t it?” Sherlock Holmes said. “I thought you were a valued employee of the American News Service.”

  “Life is change, Mr. Holmes,” Cecily said. “Good morning, Inspector Lestrade. I see you’re wondering what I’m doing here. My editor sent a boy with a carriage around for me and my colleague here when he received word of the murder. He would not allow the late hour, nor the fog, nor the chilling weather to interfere with his reporters getting a good story.”

  “And just how, if you don’t mind my asking, did he get word of the murder?” Lestrade asked.

  “I have no idea,” Cecily Perrine said. “I imagine he has a friend at the Yard. You’ll have to ask him.”

  The Count d’Hiver stepped forward and took Cecily’s hand. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, bending forward at the waist with what was almost a parody of a Continental bow. “The Count d’Hiver at your service.”

  “Charmed,” she said. “Miss Cecily Perrine, crime reporter for the Morning Chronicle. And this is Mr. William Doyle, sketch artist for the same paper.”

  At this moment the outer door slammed, and one of Lestrade’s plainclothesmen rushed into the room, past Miss Perrine and Mr. Doyle, and stopped, panting, in front of the inspector. “We’ve got it, sir!” he declared, brandishing a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. “And a fortunate thing it was, too, us spotting it in this fog. It was all wound up in this piece of scrap oilcloth, just like it is now, and tossed down one of these stairwells that leads to a cellar door around the side of a manor house on Pettigrew Court in the next block.”

  “Very pleasing work, Thompson,” Lestrade said, taking the bundle. “Now we’ll see.” He turned to Holmes. “Well, Mr. Holmes, would you care to attempt a description of the contents of this oilcloth before I open it?”

  “Certainly, Lestrade,” Holmes said. “One black silk top hat; one pair of black patent-leather shoes.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I think you’ll find that one or both of the shoes have been cut or ripped apart. And you’ll certainly find bloodstains on both shoes.”

  “Bloodstains!” Lestrade ripped open the bundle. “Here’s the hat. The shoes—yes, they’re inside.” He gave the hat a cursory glance, and then put it aside and held the shoes up to the light. “Yes, they do seem to be splattered with some sort of stain. Blood! I believe it is blood. Amazing, Holmes; how ever did you deduce that? But they would seem to be whole.” He held the pair of shoes out to Holmes. “No ripping or slicing appears to have been done on either shoe.”

  Holmes took the shoes and examined them, one at a time. He sniffed, he peered, he pried, he took his magnifying glass to them. “Ah!” he said. “Lestrade, look here! There was no need for the killer to destroy the shoes. The matter is self-evident!” He took the left shoe and, with Lestrade peering over his arm, and t
he rest of his audience gathered closely behind, sharply twisted the heel. It rotated a half turn, revealing a meticulously cut-out compartment in the leather. “This is what the killer was after,” Holmes said. “The contents of this compartment. Which, I note, he now has.”

  “You expected to find that?” Lestrade asked.

  “Something like it,” Holmes said. “The killer was searching for something, as he was in each of the other murders, and somehow he discovered that it was concealed in one of the shoes. Probably the victim told him, hoping to be spared a few moments longer. This business is grotesque.”

  “Then why did he take the top hat?” Lestrade demanded. “Was there something concealed in it also?”

  “Yes, Inspector, there was.”

  “What?”

  “The bloody shoes. The killer didn’t want to wait in the victim’s house to discover the secret of the shoes. Perhaps he heard the valet descending from upstairs. He also didn’t want to be seen on the street carrying a pair of bloody shoes. So he concealed his own hat under his outer garment—probably a collapsible topper—and borrowed the victim’s.”

  “Why not conceal the shoes under his own hat, or his top-coat or cloak or whatever?”

  “All that blood, Lestrade. Remember, the blood was a lot fresher when he departed with the shoes.”

  “That’s so,” Lestrade admitted.

  “Fascinating!” Cecily Perrine said softly, making obscure scratches with her pencil in her small notebook.

  “Indeed a remarkable bit of deduction,” the Count d’Hiver agreed.

  “Elementary,” Holmes commented. “The real question is, what was the object which was once concealed in this shallow space?”

  Lestrade took the shoe and stared into the hollow heel. “Precious gems?” he suggested.

  “That is a possibility,” Holmes said. He took out a slender ivory rule and carefully measured the cavity, making a sketch of it in his pocket notebook and jotting down the measurements.

  “Well,” the Count d’Hiver said, “this has all been very interesting. I thank you for your patience, Mr. Holmes. And you, Inspector. I will not stand in your way any longer. I only hope that the unfortunate demise of Mr., ah, Hope brings us to a solution of these damnable—excuse me, Miss Perrine—murders. I will await with interest your report on this affair.” And with that, he nodded abruptly to each of them, carefully adjusted his top hat on his head, and strode through the door.